Can clinch tonight with win over GC

Kinston senior forward Denzel Keyes goes up for a dunk against Tarboro during Tuesday's game at Viking Gym. The Vikings can clinch their seventh straight conference championship with a win tonight at Greene Central.

Casey Mozingo / The Free Press

By Ryan Herman / Sports Editor

Published: Thursday, February 7, 2013 at 04:57 PM.

The number “7” has many representations in life, such as luck and completion.

For Kinston’s boys basketball team, it represents dominance.

The Vikings can claim their seventh consecutive conference championship tonight with a win at Greene Central. The streak dates back to the 2006-07 season, when Kinston was a member of the old Eastern Carolina 3A Conference.

Now, in their final year of the Eastern Plains 2A, the Vikings (18-2, 10-0) are a win away from holding the title outright for the seventh straight season — they’ve already clinched at least a share — and two wins away from their second unbeaten run through conference play since the streak began.

Kinston enters tonight’s game having won nine in a row following a pair of heart-breaking losses in the HighSchoolOT.com Holiday Invitational, the second which helped fuel its current fire to not lose again.

The number “7” has many representations in life, such as luck and completion.

For Kinston’s boys basketball team, it represents dominance.

The Vikings can claim their seventh consecutive conference championship tonight with a win at Greene Central. The streak dates back to the 2006-07 season, when Kinston was a member of the old Eastern Carolina 3A Conference.

Now, in their final year of the Eastern Plains 2A, the Vikings (18-2, 10-0) are a win away from holding the title outright for the seventh straight season — they’ve already clinched at least a share — and two wins away from their second unbeaten run through conference play since the streak began.

Kinston enters tonight’s game having won nine in a row following a pair of heart-breaking losses in the HighSchoolOT.com Holiday Invitational, the second which helped fuel its current fire to not lose again.

The Vikings blew a double-digit lead in the third quarter and didn’t score in the fourth as they fell to Waxhaw Cuthbertson — the team they beat for the NCHSAA state 2A title last season — 50-47.

Since the Dec. 28 defeat on a neutral floor in Raleigh, Kinston has won its past nine games by an average of 36 points, including a 50-point win over Tarboro on Tuesday and a 60-point win over the Rams in their first meeting on Jan. 18.

Greene Central (5-15, 2-7) has struggled this season and had lost its first seven conference games before rallying past Tarboro for an 88-80 win on Friday. On Wednesday, in a make-up game from the Jan. 25 winter weather and last week’s storms, the Rams were able to rally from behind to knock off host SouthWest Edgecombe 71-66 in overtime.

Just because his team won 93-33 in their first meeting, Tyndall isn’t taking his rivals to the north lightly.

“We have to keep playing with a purpose,” he said. “No one is going to lay down for us.”

Kinston’s 2007-08 squad that won the school’s first state title in any sport in 43 years finished conference play that year 10-0. The Vikings lost four games that season, all to out-of-state teams, including two in the then-called GlaxoSmithKline Holiday Invitational (currently the HSOT.com Invite).

At that point they were 9-4. But they rallied together and finished the season by winning their final 19 games, including a 60-58 win over Trinity for the state 3A title.

This season’s Kinston team is looking to follow the same blueprint.

“We just want to be great,” Dawson said. “We’re striving for greatness.”

Managing Editor Bryan C. Hanks contributed to this story. Ryan Herman can be reached at 252-559-1073 or Ryan.Herman@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter: @KFPSports.